Word-Wednesday for July 19, 2023

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for July 19, 2023, the twenty-ninth Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of summer, and the two-hundredth day of the year, with one-hundred sixty-five days remaining.

 
Wannaska Phenology Update for July 19, 2023
Blueberry Update
This year’s harvest isn’t up to last year, but you can still find some fine, juicy blueberries. It looks like a second wave are just starting to ripen, and the wood ticks have pretty much retired for the season.

The bees are burying themselves in the thistle blossoms, and the Black-eyed Susans are lining the forest road ditches.

The new crescent Moon is easier to spot low in the west at early twilight, which will help you find the three planets as shown above.

July 19 Fickle Pickle Wednesday Menu Special: Potato Dumpling


July 19 Nordhem Wednesday Lunch: Updated daily by 11:00am, usually.


Earth/Moon Almanac for July 19, 2023
Sunrise: 4:40am; Sunset: 9:19pm; 2 minutes, 10 seconds less daylight today
Moonrise: 7:21am; Moonset: 10:48pm, waxing crescent, 4% illuminated.

Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

Temperature Almanac for July 19, 2023
                Average            Record              Today
High             77                     90                     72
Low              55                     43                     55


July 19 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• Global Hug Your Kids Day
• National Daiquiri Day
• International Retainer Day
• National Words with Friends Day
• National Hot Dog Day

July 19 Word Riddle
Why does a fork have four prongs?*


July 19 Word Pun
Geology rocks, but geography is where it’s at.


July 19 The Devil’s Dictionary Word-Pram
SAFETY-CLUTCH, n. A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the hoisting apparatus.

Once I seen a human ruin
     In an elevator-well,
And his members was bestrewin’
     All the place where he had fell.

And I says, apostrophisin’
     That uncommon woful wreck:
“Your position’s so surprisin’
     That I tremble for your neck!”

Then that ruin, smilin’ sadly
     And impressive, up and spoke:
“Well, I wouldn’t tremble badly,
     For it’s been a fortnight broke.”

Then, for further comprehension
     Of his attitude, he begs
I will focus my attention
     On his various arms and legs—

How they all are contumacious;
     Where they each, respective, lie;
How one trotter proves ungracious,
     T’other one an alibi.

These particulars is mentioned
     For to show his dismal state,
Which I wasn’t first intentioned
     To specifical relate.

None is worser to be dreaded
     That I ever have heard tell
Than the gent’s who there was spreaded
     In that elevator-well.

Now this tale is allegoric—
     It is figurative all,
For the well is metaphoric
     And the feller didn’t fall.

I opine it isn’t moral
     For a writer-man to cheat,
And despise to wear a laurel
     As was gotten by deceit.

For ’tis Politics intended
     By the elevator, mind,
It will boost a person splendid
     If his talent is the kind.

Col. Bryan had the talent
     (For the busted man is him)
And it shot him up right gallant
     Till his head begun to swim.

Then the rope it broke above him
     And he painful come to earth
Where there’s nobody to love him
     For his detrimented worth.

Though he’s livin’ none would know him,
     Or at leastwise not as such.
Moral of this woful poem:
     Frequent oil your safety-clutch.

                                            Porfer Poog

for Sven

July 19 Etymology Word of the Week
heresy
/ˈher-ə-sē/ n., belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine, from Old French heresie, eresie "heresy," and by extension "sodomy, immorality" (circa 1200), from Latin hæresis, "school of thought, philosophical sect." The Latin word is from Greek hairesis "a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice, a means of taking; a deliberate plan, purpose; philosophical sect, school," from haireisthai "take, seize," middle voice of hairein "to choose," a word of unknown origin, perhaps cognate with Hittite šaru "booty," Welsh herw "booty".

The Greek word was used by Church writers in reference to various sects, schools, etc. in the New Testament: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and even the Christians, as sects of Judaism. Hence the meaning "unorthodox religious sect or doctrine" in the Latin word as used by Christian writers in Late Latin. But in English bibles it usually is translated sect. Transferred (non-religious) use in English is from late 14th century.


July 19 Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1595 Astronomer Johannes Kepler has an epiphany and develops his theory of the geometrical basis of the universe.
• 1674 Court of Holland bans books of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Meyer.
• 1836 HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin arrives in Ascension Island.
• 1848 First US women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls NY, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
• 1860 First railroad reaches Kansas.
• 1880 San Francisco Public Library starts lending books.
• 1937 Entartete Art Fair opens in Munich.

July 19 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1744 Heinrich Christian Boie, German author.
• 1789 John Martin, English painter and engraver.
• 1795 John Gifford Bellett, Irish writer.
• 1819 Gottfried Keller, German-Swiss poet and novelist.
• 1834 Edgar Degas, French impressionist painter, sculptor, and artist.
• 1849 Ferdinand Brunetière, French writer.
• 1863 Dwijendralal Ray, Bengali poet.
• 1863 Hermann Bahr, Austrian writer.
• 1875 Alice Dunbar Nelson, American poet.
• 1895 Xu Beihong, Chinese painter.
• 1896 A. J. Cronin, Scottish writer.
• 1899 Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay, Indian author, poet, and playwright.
• 1905 Edgar Snow, American author.
• 1914 Josef Páleníček, Czech composer.
• 1919 Miltos Sachtouris, Greek poet and author.
• 1921 Elizabeth Spencer, American novelist, short story writer, and playwright.
• 1927 Jan Myrdal, Swedish writer.
• 1946 Dick Warner, Irish writer.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem or pram) from the following words:

• artiodactyl: /ˌär-tē-ō-ˈdak-tᵊl/ adj., an even number of functional toes on each foot.
• binnacle: /ˈbin-ə-kəl/ n., a built-in housing for a ship’s compass.
• corbeille: /kȯr-'bā/ n., an elegant basket of flowers or fruit.
• elsewhither: /ˈels-hwɪ-ðər/ adv., in another direction; toward a different place or goal.
• fogram: /‘foh-gruhm/ n., an old-fashioned or overly conservative person; a fogy.
• hyphy: /ˈhaɪ-fē/ n., a style of uptempo hip-hop music originating in northern California and associated with a frenetic style of dancing; adj., extremely rowdy, excited, or energetic.
• imbrue: /ihm-BROO/ v., to soak, drench, or stain, especially (but not necessarily) with blood; to permeate or impregnate.
• mense: /ˈmen(t)s/, n., propriety.
• plout: /plaʊt/ n., the action of plunging or submerging, esp. in a churn operated by a plunger; a heavy fall of rain; a splash; a splashing or plopping sound, esp. of a fish breaking the surface of the water.
• sciophobia: /sahy-oh-FOH-bee-uh/ n., an overwhelming fear of shadows.

July 19, 2023 Word-Wednesday Feature
Summer
/ˈsə-mər/ n., the season between spring and autumn comprising in the northern hemisphere usually the months of June, July, and August or as reckoned astronomically extending from the June solstice to the September equinox, from Old English sumor "summer," from Proto-Germanic sumra- (source also of Old Saxon, Old Norse, Old High German sumar, Old Frisian sumur, Middle Dutch somer, Dutch zomer, German Sommer), from Proto-Indo-European root sm- "summer" (source also of Sanskrit sama "season, half-year," Avestan hama "in summer," Armenian amarn "summer," Old Irish sam, Old Welsh ham, Welsh haf "summer"). The oldie-but-goodie words don't need to change much.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 tells us, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven..." As a season of so many tastes,  here are a few flavorful words to warm your reading palate:

Summer is a verb.

Lisa Birnbach, in The Official Preppy Handbook

It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.

Walter Winchell

No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.

James Russell Lowell, in the poem “The Vision of Sir Launfal”

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

People who don’t even notice whether it’s summer or winter are lucky.
Anton Chekhov, the character Masha speaking, in The Three Sisters
Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

Thomas Carlyle, Chartism

Summer-induced stupidity. That was the diagnosis.

Aimee Friedman, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Miranda Merchant, Sea Change

Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January.

Hal Borland, Sundials of the Seasons

Aaah, summer—that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It’s a time to hunt for insects, master handstands, practice swimming strokes, conquer trees, explore nooks and crannies, and make new friends.

Darell Hammond, Summer Vacation Hurts Poor children—But is Year-Round School the Answer?

It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.

John Cheever, the voice of the narrator, The Common Day

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, a reflection of narrator Nick Carraway, in The Great Gatsby

Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.

Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days, and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.

Ada Louise Huxtable, On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change

Oh, the summer night,
Has a smile of light,
And she sits on a sapphire throne.

Barry Cornwall (pen name of Bryan W. Procter), from the poem “The Nights”

In summer the song
sings itself.

William Carlos Williams, The Botticellian Trees

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, Sonnets

Steep thyself in a bowl of summertime.

Virgil, in Minor Poems

Our summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

Emily Dickinson, poem no. 1540

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.

John Lubbock, The Use of Life

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.

Regina Brett

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.

Sam Keen

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

Wallace Stevens

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Henry James

From A Year with Rilke, July 19 Entry
With Real Love, There Are No Recipes, from Letters to a Young Poet, Rome, May 14, 1904

Whenever people in love act out of an imagined fusion of their beings, their every action is dictated by convention. Every relation colored by such confusion is conventional, however exotic (that is, immoral) it might appear. Even separating would be a conventional step, an automatic alternative lacking in skill and creativity.

Whoever takes it seriously, discovers that, as with death which is real, so with real love, there are no easy recipes. For both these undertakings, there are no universally agreed-upon rules. But in the same measure that we begin as individuals to explore life’s meaning for us, these great things come toward us to be met and known. The claims made upon us by the hard work of love are bigger than life and essential to our unfolding, and we are seldom up to them at the outset. But if we hold steady and take this love upon us as a task and a teaching, instead of losing ourselves in an easy and frivolous game behind which to hide the most honest questions of our existence—this may be felt as a small illumination and step forward by those who come long after us. That in itself would be a lot.

The Birthday
by Marc Chagall

Be better than yesterday,
learn a new word today,
try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow,
and write when you have the time.




*Because anything less would be a threek, a twok, or a pronk.